An analytical method for determining the non-enclosed elastoplastic interface of a circular hole

Abstract

Based on the Mohr–Coulomb yield criterion, an analytical method is presented to determine the plastic zone in an infinite plate weakened by a circular hole and subjected to non-hydrostatic stresses at infinity. It is worth noting that this paper considers the more complicated case that the plastic zone cannot completely surround the hole, namely the elastoplastic interface is non-enclosed. Initially, the non-circular elastic zone in the physical plane is mapped onto the outer region of a unit circle in the image plane by the conformal transformation in the complex variable method. Thereby, determining the elastoplastic interface is equivalent to solving the mapping function coefficients. The nonlinear equations for solving the coefficients are established by considering both the stress continuity conditions along the elastoplastic interface and the stress boundary conditions along the elastic part of the hole. Naturally, the problem can be further transformed into an optimization problem, which is ultimately achieved by the differential-evolution algorithm; what is more, an analytical solution with high accuracy is obtained. Based on the programmed computing, the influences of various parameters on the shape and size of the plastic zone are given.